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How to Move A Story Forward When You're Stuck

Have you ever reached a point in your story where your
characters stop talking to you, the plot stalls, and you’re banging your head
against the keyboard trying to figure out how to fix the problem? You try to
push through it, sketching out the plot points or letting your mind wander
while you clean the house. But nothing works. This happened while I was writing my first Harlequin historical, Engagement of Convenience. So, what do you do after your
bathroom is sparkling and you still haven’t come to a solution? Kill a character. Or, if that isn’t
practical for your story, burn something important to the ground.

It sounds violent, and it is, and that’s the point. A death
puts pressure on your hero and heroine, compelling them to act, and character
action is what drives the story. Depending on who dies, your hero or heroine
may be motivated to seek revenge, to solve a mystery, to help others deal with
the tragedy, or to hide the body. The course of action your characters choose
will be influenced by their ultimate goals, but forcing them to make a decision
will push them and the story in a new direction.

A dead body is also a great opportunity for conflict. Based
on the hero and heroine’s goals, the hero may want to hide the body, while the
heroine might want to call the police. This clash will create tension between
them that you can use throughout the rest of the story. Also, a stiff in the story will put external
pressure on the hero and heroine from either the authorities or the villain. A
friend of mine who writes paranormal romance likes this method, and often uses
it when she is stuck. Her paranormal characters are trying to evade detection,
so when they’re caught with a dead body, it creates all kinds of problems for
them to deal with.

Death can be a powerful tool for characterization. How a hero
or heroine reacts to a death will reveal who they are, and will indicate
whether or not you need to do more character development. If your hero simply
steps over his friend’s dead body, or doesn’t take much time to mourn, you may
need to reexamine your hero to understand why he’s so callous. Or, if it’s
appropriate to the story, the hero’s callous reaction can be used to illustrate
his growth. If your hero reacts with more emotion to a death later in the
story, then it will show how much he has grown and changed.

If killing characters isn’t your thing, or doesn’t work for
your book, then burn something down. A big fire in your story will push you out
of your comfort zone, and make you take a hard look at whether or not your carefully
created plot is actually working. As writers, it’s easy to fall in love with
our plots. After all, we’ve worked hard on them and they seem so neat and tidy
on spreadsheets or note cards. However, once we start writing, our characters
don’t always follow the path we’ve laid out for them, or, if you’re a pantser
like me, they stop telling you where they want to go. As a result, you may
spend precious time writing scenes you’ll probably end up cutting as you try to
force your characters in a certain direction. Instead of forcing things to
work, try lighting a fire under your characters, literally, and shocking them
and you into in an entirely new direction.

I once had a historical heroine whose story got stuck in her
colonial house. I wrote scene after scene with her in this house, hiding the
hero from the villain, helping the hero recover from a gunshot wound, and in
the end boring myself to death. I didn’t know how to get the story moving. Then
I realized that the house had become a crutch for both the character and me. As
a result, I decided to burn her house down. The emotional and physical
repercussions of suddenly finding my heroine homeless got her story and my
creativity moving. An author friend of mine who writes romantic suspense finds
burning things down, or blowing things up, to be very helpful for getting her
hero and heroine on the move. Like a dead body, a fire can increases the
stakes, provide conflict and move the plot forward.

If these suggestions seem too violent, or you aren’t ready to
commit murder or arson, then maybe just the threat of death or fire is all you
need to spark your creativity. For instance, there’s nothing like the drama of
an approaching army or the suspense of a crazy killer chasing the heroine to put
pressure on your characters and motivate them to act. Just make sure that whatever drama you choose
is intense, so that it ups the stakes for your hero or heroine and keeps the
reader hooked. For me, the threat of burning down the heroine's precious house in Engagement of Convenience was enough to get her story moving after a big block.

Choosing to kill a character or burn something down is up to
you, and isn’t always the right option for every story. However, the next time
your WIP hits a sticking point, like my novel Engagement of Convenience did, I challenge you to step out of the comfort zone
of your preconceived plot and consider the more dramatic options. By doing
something powerful and unexpected in your story, you’ll create conflict,
character growth and, on another level, author development. Surprising yourself
and your characters with a traumatic event might be just the thing to snap you
out of your writer’s block, and get you successfully to “The End.”

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